A Mineralogical Perspective on Rare Earth Elements (REEs) Extraction from Drill Cuttings: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Respected Reviewer 1,

Thank you sincerely for taking the time to provide your thoughtful and professional comments on our manuscript. We deeply appreciate your assessment and fully recognize the key pillars of a strong review article: a comprehensive summary of the existing literature, critical analysis, and the inclusion of novel perspectives.

We acknowledge, with humility, that our initial submission fell short particularly in delivering the level of critical insight expected in sections where such depth is essential. Your concerns are entirely valid, and we understand why the manuscript, in its previous form, did not meet your expectations.

However, we are grateful to the academic editor for granting us the opportunity to revise our work, and we respectfully request your reconsideration in reviewing our revised version. We have made substantial efforts to address your comments in detail and have strengthened the critical analysis throughout. We hope that the improvements made will demonstrate both our appreciation of your feedback and our commitment to enhancing the scholarly value of this review. It is our sincere hope that this version may offer a more compelling and acceptable contribution in your view. We will respond in two sections, firstly, the Critical Revisions and then specific comments.

We haven’t used any font colour to show the changes but tried to respond via pointing out at the exact section number where the changes were made. I hope, this approach will be alright with you. (Please see attached file)

Overall Highlight:

1. New Section 2 and Figure 2 – Outline and Flowchart – have been added.
2. Sections are renumbered; introductory chapters have been merged in Section 1- Introduction.
3. Figure 3 has been improved.
4. In Section 4, after presenting visual summary of prior studies, critical discussion is carried out based core vs cuttings , limitations in analytical techniques, effect of drilling mud etc.
5. A qualitative conceptual discussion has been introduced in Section 7 for cost-benefit analysis of REE extraction from drill cuttings.
6. Abstract and Conclusions have been modified.

Point by point response file has been attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments to the authors

Manuscript ID: minerals-3610679

Title: A Mineralogical Perspective on Rare Earth Elements (REEs) Extraction from Drill Cuttings

 

General comments:

The present work aimed at literature review for REEs extraction from drill cuttings. The topic is interesting regarding the ongoing global situation and new sources should be discussed and compared. For this paper, I strongly recommend a technical-economic analysis. The manuscript needs a revision for a Review format as it seems more a Perspective or Discussion paper. Also, more engineering discussion is needed. The paper outline (structure) is confusing and needs to be tailored to deliver the best message.

The main topic of the paper starts on page 15 (extraction techniques). Please summarize previous chapters. Also, chapter 6 just mention some techniques and it should be better described, explained and mostly discussed.

 

Specific comments

• Page 2 – don’t need separate into a new chapter, the authors may delete “ What are REEs?” and keep further sub-chapters.
• Table 1 – REEs content should be added as well.
• Page 4 – delete “Among these, the most promising are:”
• Chapter 2.4 needs a table comparing composition of these potential REE-sources.
• Table 4 – is analytical methods really important to show? What is the impact in discussion/analysis? Also, recovery efficiency column seems not important.
• Figure 2 – how was this analysis carried out? Which data base was used?
• Chapter 7 is not important for this manuscript. Delete it.
• Figure 5 – improve the quality. As far as I could understand, this figure is disconnected from the manuscript.
• Chapter 11, Conclusions – write as a paragraph.
•  

 

 

 

Decision

Major revision.

 

 

Author Response

Respected Reviewer 2:

We are deeply grateful for the time and expertise you dedicated to reviewing our manuscript. Your constructive criticism not only highlighted areas needing improvement but also guided us in understanding how to strengthen the overall quality of our work. For that, we sincerely thank you. We have addressed your comments in two parts: a summary of general critical responses is provided in Table 1(a), while Table 1(b) specifically responds to your individual points.

We haven’t used any font colour to show the changes but tried to respond via pointing out at the exact section number where the changes were made. I hope, this approach will be alright with you.

Overall Highlight:

1. New Section 2 and Figure 2 – Outline and Flowchart – has been added.
2. Sections are renumbered; introductory chapters have been merged in Section 1- Introduction.
3. Figure 3 has been improved.
4. In Section 4, after presenting visual summary of prior studies, critical discussion is carried out based core vs cuttings , limitations in analytical techniques, effect of drilling mud etc.
5. A qualitative conceptual discussion has been introduced in Section 7 for cost-benefit analysis of REE extraction from drill cuttings.
6. Abstract and Conclusions have been modified.

Please see attached file for point by point response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for taking time and helping us improve our work. Point to point response to your minor concerns have been attached. Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments to the authors

Manuscript ID: minerals-3610679

Title: A Mineralogical Perspective on Rare Earth Elements (REEs) Extraction from Drill Cuttings

 

General comments:

The present work aimed at literature review for REEs extraction from drill cuttings. The topic is interesting regarding the ongoing global situation and new sources should be discussed and compared. The manuscript has improved after revisions. Please double check the figures and table numbering.

The manuscript is too long. I recommend to editor to break it into 2 review articles (part I and part II).

 

 

• Figure 1 (page 2) – this figure is not needed
• Figure 1 (page 4) – insert it in the main text as topics instead of figure. Or just delete it.
• I think this manuscript meets the goals for sustainable mining (10.1016/j.jece.2025.116600)
• Figure 4 – the quality is too poor. Please improve it.
• Figure 5 – increase the font size.
• Table 6 – all these sources found the respective REE, or is there any geographical difference?
• Line 730 – what “w.r.t.” means?
• I still recommend that analytical techniques are out of this scope. And it should be placed in supplementary material or appendices.

 

 

Decision

Minor revision.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for taking time and helping us improve our work. Point to point response to your minor concerns have been attached. Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf